Not politically correct - the Catholic Church
UPDATE at the bottom:
An announcement that opens a can of worms. From the
Vancouver Sun:
Vatican under fire for linking gays to pedophilia
Gay groups and politicians condemned Pope Benedict's number two on Wednesday for calling homosexuality a "pathology" and linking it directly to sexual abuse of children.
The comments made by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone during a visit to Chile, and the controversy they caused, were splashed on mainstream Italian newspapers on Wednesday.
The French foreign ministry and some Catholic blogs that support the pope also condemned the cardinal's remarks.
As the scandal over sexual abuse of children by priests has spread, some in the Catholic Church have called for a review of the Church's rule that prohibits priests from marrying, saying marriage would allow priests to enjoy a healthy sex life.
Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, who is sometimes called the "deputy pope," told a news conference in Santiago on Monday:
"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and paedophilia, but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia."
"This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms," he said. "The behaviour of the priests in this case, the negative behaviour, is very serious, is scandalous."
This will be interesting to follow -- Cardinal Bertone would not say something that inflammatory without the Pope's say so.
Being gay is no skin off my ass -- I know people who are gay and I care for them and hope that they find happiness in their lives. That being said, I cannot but think that it is some genetic quirk that causes the predisposition. If this is so and it alters someone's sexual preferences, why could it not also alter their age preferences. The morals of society have become lessened to where someone can "come out" and have that celebrated instead of shamed. Society's morals still shun the sexualizing of children -- groups like
NAMBLA are considered pariahs (despite Obama's
School Safety Czar promoting them). How long will this be?
Like I said -- it will be interesting to follow...
UPDATE -- Jen brought up the thought that there are more pedophile assaults by straights than by gays. I ran into
this paper from the UC Davis psychology department that breaks a lot of the numbers down. It is a very mixed survey between bi, hetero and homo and pre-adolescent and post-adolescent and she was 100% correct. It's not a big slam-dunk number but there is a statistical preference for hetero and bi men for post adolescent children.
The Church needs to check its facts and apologize.
The
whole website is an excellent reference.
Posted by DaveH at April 14, 2010 8:35 PM